


Reverence & Revelation

by firebirdschild



Category: Honor Harrington Series - David Weber
Genre: Brain twist, Community: 31_days, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-10 23:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firebirdschild/pseuds/firebirdschild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrew LaFollet is still trying to wrap his mind around it, to understand how he can serve his Lady, his world, the Tester.  But this?  This might take him a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reverence & Revelation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aoife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aoife/gifts).



> This is all Aoife's fault....

“He’s confused love with loyalty, Benjamin. And to be honest, I’m not sure its safe nor that he’s capable of representing -”

Benjamin held up his hand, forestalling the rest of what his first wife had been intending to say.

“I didn’t tell you about Andrew’s confession for you to censure his emotions. He’s a man, no less than I was and always have been. As his Protector, I have done my duty, heard his confession. And now it is my responsibility to help him find the way in which the Tester intends for Andrew, like the rest of us, to fulfill his test to the best of his ability.”

“And you truly think he’s capable of it, turning his head and heart inside out in Lady Harrington’s service? You and I both know serving her is going to change him in ways which Andrew cannot fathom.”

“It is, my love. But this is his choice, his Test. All we can do is bear witness.”

“Then may the Comforter walk beside him.” Katherine intoned.

“In this moment and every other.” Elaine, his junior wife added, completing the ancient ritual call and response.

***

He watched her. It was his duty. But, Tester help him, it was also his obsession. He watched as the brightest of Grayson’s steadings swirled before him, curious, skeptical, and at once eager as always to meet his Lady, to see whether she was the mythical creature they’d been lead to believe who had been chosen by their Protector as his Champion.

A woman, one in the uniform of a Manticoran officer, approached and Andrew tensed, remembering the way in which his Lady had responded to another Manticoran so recently. That flinch, that minute gesture of which his Lady had been so unaware. The last time he had intervened and in doing so he had failed. And so Andrew waited, watching to see what his Lady would do, trying to understand and to remember that she had not been raised on Grayson and would not be acting in the manner of one of his people.

This one was different though. As soon as his Lady caught sight of the officer her face transformed, breaking into a smile more natural than any he’d seen on her features since Admiral Corvousier’s death.

“Mike!”

_Micah?_ Andrew savored the taste of the name. It was reassuring and at the same time alien that a woman could have a name so similar to his brother’s. 

The Manticoran officer - Mike, his lady had called her - smiled in return and as soon as she was within reach pulled his Lady into an embrace that spoke of both familiarity and fondness. Andrew waited, expecting that flinch, that subtle sign of revulsion at another’s touch. But it didn’t come. His Lady, the woman he served, the woman with whom he was already half in love, accepted the Manticoran woman’s embrace. She relaxed in the other woman’s arms. Every nuance of her body’s language telling him of the safety she found within that embrace. 

Andrew froze dead in his tracks, his mind stuttering, stumbling over something at once familiar but not. It couldn’t be. Certainly there were Grayson sister-wives who found comfort in each other’s arms but her, his Lady? No. They needed her to be as close to something they could accept as possible. And for her to be this? The Conclave would never accept it. Grayson wouldn’t. 

And yet there she stood. And damn him but she looked so at ease. 

She was his liege-lady. His Test. And if accepting the possibility that the reason she flinched had nothing to do with the particular man in question and everything to do with men in general, then so be it. He would learn. He would become what his world, his Lady, and the Comforter required of him. And may god have mercy on him if he was wrong.


End file.
